eviDEnce and Cloud for more InformeD and effective pOlicies.
“The mission of Decido is to demonstrate the groundbreaking impact of the adoption of innovative methodologies, tools and data enabling the effective development of better evidence-based policies by public authorities. Decido will serve as an intermediary between the public sector, the citizen science world and the European Cloud Infrastructure (ECI) through the direct collaboration with EOSC and will provide storage capacity and processing power through EGI infrastructure.”
WHAT IS DECIDO
Decido is a three-year EU-funded project that aims to boost the use of EOSC (European open science cloud) by Public Authorities enabling innovation in the policy making sector, removing European fragmentation, allowing cross-support and cross-collaboration and the use of secure compute – and data – intensive services.
DECIDO'S OBJECTIVES
Help public authorities to support evidence-based policies
Advances in information technology allowing the collection, sharing and analyses of large amounts of data, leveraging on high performance and cloud computing, are enabling important changes in decision making processes. As demonstrated by the corporate sector, data can become the basis for better and more effective decision making. To unleash the use of evidence in the public sector, policy makers need to have at their disposal tools and competences that allow them to take control of data from multiple sources and integrate and exploit it in a scalable and effective manner. DECIDO will address the technical and policy challenges related to the discovery, access and exploitation of data and data-as-a-service platforms while benefiting a secure environment for data processing.
Ensure that data contribute to evidence based policymaking
One of the key success factors for evidence-based policy development is the availability of the right data and information presented in an accessible way in order to drive, monitor and evaluate political strategies and programmes. Monitoring is crucial in order to support agile and responsive policy making in a continuous way. However, the data needs to be processed and presented so as to make the trends and implications of the data accessible. Monitoring systems need to focus on key political objectives, priorities and needs in order to establish a data-based approach and ICT-related measures, which is why a thoroughly participatory approach is necessary, so that these can be built-in from the start. The project will therefore foster a strategic planning culture encompassing systematic monitoring and evaluation.
Actively involve local actors and stakeholders in data generation
The involvement of communities in the policy making process through co-creation approaches, where citizens and public organizations work together, increases legitimacy and decreases citizens’ distrust in government. Such involvement of the relevant actors (e.g. citizens, businesses, NGOs, civil servants) will build on a careful analysis of the context and on adopting and applying the right balance between many factors e.g. the questions made, the incentives proposed, the tools used. To this end, DECIDO will provide a mixed framework including instruments, guidelines and approaches fostering both co-creation and citizen science approaches enabling an effective involvement of actors, from policy makers to citizens, in the policy lifecycle. This approach will provide a thorough understanding of the impact of the use of cloud computing and Big Data technologies in participants of value chain of evidence-based policy making with the aim of providing a set of recommendations and lessons learned that will enable public authorities to develop pathways for the introduction of such technologies and approaches.
Assess transformative impacts in disaster risk management
DECIDO will set up and run 4 pilots in the following disaster risk management domains: floods, fires, power outage. The pilots will run in 4 different EU countries (Italy, Finland, Spain and Greece), with diverse economic, social and cultural backgrounds. They will demonstrate the applicability, impact, reusability and scalability of the proposed tools, models, methods and approaches, in different scenarios and geographical dimensions. The latter will be further demonstrated through cross-pilot replicability activities.
Pursue sustained use of data analytics in policy making
DECIDO will develop pathways and business plans to guarantee sustained use of its tools/services, methodologies and approaches contributing to the adoption of evidence-based policy making and of the European Cloud Infrastructure across Europe. The project will establish a win-win collaboration with EOSC with a threefold objective: 1) to assure that DECIDO portal is part of EOSC portal 2) to widen the European Science Cloud and European Data Infrastructure to the public sector 3) guidelines and pathways coming from DECIDO project become the baseline of the EOSC Competence Centre for PAs and policy makers.
PHASES OF THE PROJECT:
DECIDO will deploy an agile methodology for the implementation of its objectives, with frequent validation and feedback loops that will be included in the process as the following phases show
Phase 1 – Preparation
Phase 2 – Decido ICT Environment and EOSC Services
Phase 3 – Experimentation
Phase 4 – Pathways, Sustainable Business Plans and Recommendations
THE FOUR PILOTS OF DECIDO:
Decido is experimenting and validating its approaches and tools in the domain of citizens involvement in emergencies management ranging from humanitarian crisis to power outages passing trhough wildfires and floods:
Pilot on Forest fires in Kajaani, Finland
Pilots in 3 Emergency Areas selected: Floods, Food distribution and Ukrainian refugees, Turin (IT)
Pilot on Power Outage in island of Halki – Greece
Pilot on Wildfires in the Aragon Region – Spain
“The final result of the project will be the identification of a set of pathways, recommendations and a sound business plan directing Public Authorities through the transition towards the use of the European Cloud Infrastructure and the application of evidence and co-creation in the policy lifecycle.”
